uardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father's wish, and
hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
livelihood; and independence was Margaret's ideal.

Her father's friend, her own protector--in that light she regarded
Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct
of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for
a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the
rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience.
Cran-ley's temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first
human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling
in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them.
Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied
himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once
tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so
surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though
a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.

Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which
his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she
should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley's
original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the
Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some
kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should
never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost
forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan.
For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting
fool; and then Margaret's illness had occurred, and had caused delay,
and given time for reflection.

"After all," he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache
in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed
hansoms)--"after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no
inconvenient claims."

For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways
of "removing" an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed
across a not uninstructed intellect--a scheme wh